Hot and Humid

We've had a week of good training for living in Florida: hot and humid with random thunderstorms rolling in about every other day. I thought I was going to get wet out running my last couple census routes today, but I was able to duck and dodge and avoid getting dumped on.

Not much else going on here. After last weekend's doin's we're just sort of sitting around. There is an airshow at the little local airport a couple miles from our apartment, but I'll likely be working all weekend in a mostly-vain attempt to get a big chunk of census work completed. At this point, all that is left are the problems, so it's painfully slow. I spend four hours yesterday trying (unsuccessfully) to locate one person. He's one of a couple dozen or so that will be equally difficult to track down. Fun times. The census thing is rather quickly wrapping up and none too soon. Everyone is ready for this to be over.

All last fall I had this gut feeling that the whole H1N1 panic was being manufactured. Yes, the fact that some of the early fatalities were precisely the people who are generally the least likely to die from the flu was disconcerting. But even when it seemed obvious to everyone that H1N1 was just another variant of the seasonal flu that should be taken no more or less seriously than any other, the WHO just kept whipping up more and more panic. I never did figure out what the big deal was, but then again, it isn't my field. Maybe it was a big deal somewhere other than where I happen to be. Well, it seems others who are more qualified are asking the same thing. Not that it will make any difference. By design, the WHO is immune to criticism. To me, the whole thing is like déjà vu all over again.

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you" has been a bad running joke for the entire history of human government. Now we have the FTC wanting to "help" the news industry. The fact that the "help" will give the FTC the potential to veto any story it disapproves of is, I'm certain, far from the enlightened minds of those proposing yet-another expansion of government control over yet-another sector of the economy.

Anyway. I feels like nap time.